Haunted
by KeitorinNara
Summary: Sabretooth has finally gone too far. Will his conscience push him over the edge, or is there something more to this than meets the eye?
1. Chapter 1

**Hey all! So, I've realized that it's been quite some time since any of my last updates, and I wanted to apologize. I had completely lost my train of thought in regards to my current stories, especially since I was introduced to Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Merlin. My time has been spent watching all those looong episodes, and I have to honestly state that it was definitely worth it. Anyways, here's a short story that WILL be updated regularly, since it's already finished. Hope you enjoy!**

There's a body on the table.

It's a male; dark ebony hair, muscular arms, and a broad chest. No breaths enter or leave his lungs; he remains there, lifeless, with a chest as still as the table he lays on. His eyes are closed, arms at his sides, dog tag dangling off the edge of the table.

A slash runs across the front of his throat, along both wrists, behind both knees. The hair on his body is slick, soaked with the crimson liquid so thick it looks black under the watchful gaze of night. It stains the wood of the table as it drains, still lukewarm, and begins to form puddles at the foot of each leg.

The man wipes his hands together, takes one more look at his victim, and closes the door of his bedroom behind him.

**So what'd ya think? I know it's short, but take it as a kind of teaser as to what is to come. If you want more, then PLEASE review! I DO have this short story finished already, so if y'all leave some reviews I can post new chapters on a regular basis. Until next time!**

**~Nara**


	2. Chapter 2

**So here's the next chapter, as promised! And special thanks to Risika Kiisu Seto for favoriting this story!**

**Chapter 2**

Morning comes. With the light of the yellow-white sun flowing through each window, night is expelled and eradicated. Sabretooth opens his door and looks out – the body of the man remains on the table, still dead, still breathless, still the empty husk of the life it once contained.

_ Why,_ Sabretooth asks himself, _why? Why did I claim his life for my own? Why did I choose him?_ He runs his hand down the edge of the table, one of his fingers sliding through a half-dry trail of blood while he thinks these thoughts and asks himself these questions. _Why?_

Because, frankly, there's quite enough people in the world, an incomprehensible number of bodies still walking around, souls still attached, frail balloons held in a fickle hand of the force called Life during good times, Death during bad. A single person won't be missed – as one never notices the absence of a beach's grain of sand where there are billions of others to readily take its place. He smiles, eyes skimming over the broad chest stained deep scarlet; this man lying on his table is just another leaf fallen from a tree.

And, now, he won't have to live alone anymore.

He heads around the table and places his hand on the front doorknob, then takes one last look at the beautiful centerpiece before leaving.

* * *

It's raining when he gets back; the light of the house is nothing other than gloomy, and he has to turn on a lamp to be able to see in color. The man's blood by now has stopped flowing – dripping – and is mostly dry. Locks of hair stick up in rebellion, held there by the dry glue of his life. He looks empty, emaciated – the lines of his ribs stand out in his chest, sharp and sudden beneath a once life-filled chest; his stomach has fallen in, the deep valley further emphasizing the broken morbidity of his presence.

"Beautiful."

Sabretooth strokes the hair on the man's head, flattening down the little clumps that stand up. He strokes it like anyone else would their friends when trying to comfort them: slowly, softly, with a half-smile lifting the corner of his lips. Such a gorgeous creature, lying there in front of him: sunken eyes, thin cheeks; red fissure through the front of his neck, a miasmic opening to darkened flesh and tight muscles that never shall contract again; a previously flat chest that is now a harsh mockery of what it once was, with its cold skin tight around sharp rips and an almost nonexistent stomach; legs bleeding from behind broken kneecaps, toes sticking straight up. Sabretooth had never seen a greater work of art of which he is the creator. Truly, this is something to be proud of.

He runs his hand up of the ridges of ribs in the man's upper chest, up the dip in the middle of his neck, up the clean gash. Here he stops and pulls the skin back, then digs a claw into the flesh, feels the clammy chill of death on his finger. The blood looks like oil on his fingertip, reflecting the light of the lamp in one swathe along where it stains; he brings that finger to his mouth, drags his broad, flat tongue along its length, licks his lips, smiles. The metallic taste blossoms in his mouth, widening that smile. He leans down over the body, one hand on the table's edge to balance himself – which makes the table squeak under the added weight – and presses his tongue into the fissure, relishing the bittersweet tang…

He straightens up and wipes his mouth, taking another look at the man, at the art – as always – before he steps into his bedroom and closes the door behind him. Beneath the steady pattering of the rain on the roof above him, he thinks he hears the squeak of strained wood. It's nothing, though; his house is old, this happens. It's nothing.

* * *

A new morning rolls by, the rain still drumming lazily upon the world. Sabretooth stand up out of bed, pulls his arms up over his head in a lavish and luxurious stretch, then picks yesterday's mostly-dry clothing off the floor and pulls them on. Still groggy from sleep, the heavy half-wetness of the clothing puts a hard burden on his sleepy limbs, requiring conscious energy to raise his arm, close his hand around the knob, turn it, pull the door open –

Wrong. Something's wrong. Suddenly wide awake, Sabretooth scans the room for what's different; the lamp's still on, as he left it; all the other doors are closed, as they always are; the curtains are still drawn shut, the man is still on the table with his face pointed towards his bedroom – no. No, no, no. Last night, before he went to sleep, the man's face was pointed up, like his feet – how else could he have gotten such clear access to the sweet nectar of his throat?

Sabretooth reaches out and grabs the threshold of the door, trying to calm his beating heart. There's an easy explanation for this. The squeak he heard before falling asleep last night – that's it. When he dug his fingers and tongue into the man's throat, he must have thrown off the balance of the head – the squeak was just his head lolling to the side. Nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about.

He doesn't look at it again on his way out the door.

* * *

**So here's the second chapter! Please do leave reviews! They are always very helpful. I'll even give you a dessert of your choice! Until next time**

**~Nara**


	3. Chapter 3

**Just wanted to say thanks to Risika Kiisu Seto and Jeanniebird for the reviews! Here's the next chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

It's still raining when he returns. He hesitates on opening the door due to the morning's incident, even despite its resolution. However, he has to force himself to; the rain is coming down much more heavily than it was the previous day, and if he doesn't get inside soon, the wet chill would surely get to him.

He focuses on the man as soon as he steps in, eyes constantly flitting around, searching for what else has changed. _You're being a fool_, he tells himself, walking around to the other end of the table. _This man is dead. Dead. You ended his life. You were there. You watched his soul bleed out through his throat and wrists onto the ground. _After all, of all the things in life, death is the only one that was truly permanent.

Eyes still shut, mouth still closed. As far as he can see, everything else about the body is as it was before he went to sleep the previous night, except for the head position. The blood has started to form a brown crust around the wounds, which is only to be expected – he has done this countless times. He know what he should and shouldn't expect.

He traces his claws up the side of the man's neck and face, carving little valleys in the once-flushed skin, now tight and cold to the touch. Dead three days, dead forever – a journey nobody returns from. He runs his fingers down the rest of the man's face, then strokes his head slowly. He looks almost like a sleeping child – soft innocence left unguarded, holding a different kind of beauty. His closed eyes look so serene…

Sabretooth pulls up a chair from the corner of the room and sits, one leg crossed over the other and hands clasped in his lap. He stares into the body's eyes through the closed lids, absently tapping his foot to the steady rhythm of the rain. Nothing about the body changed while he sits there…and the calm drumming of the rain draws him to sleep before anything does.

* * *

A flash of lightning and the following rumble of thunder both heard very clearly and felt through the floor shock him from his sleep – he scrambles in his chair, startled, and keeps his hands on his knees with his chest rising and falling in raucous gasps of breath. It wasn't just the thunder that startled him though, for as soon as he opened his eyes, he was met with a sight that was not right. In the liquid shadows of the room, black lowlighted by darker shades of black, near the muddied charcoal of the body's hair, two glassy grayed marbles stare back into his eyes.

No. No, no, no. There's no way for the body's eyes to have opened while he slept, against gravity like that – there must be a reason for this, as there was one for the other nights. Perhaps...perhaps he had accidentally opened those eyes when he removed his hand from its face. That has to be it – nothing else would make sense. Even though those eyes were closed when he drifted off, he opened them before he sat down…if he tells himself this enough times then maybe – just maybe – he'll believe it.

The lamp he turned on is off, that's the second thing he notices. It just burned out, he tells himself, and relief washes over his blackened heart when he tries it and finds this is true. He's almost afraid to turn back around for fear of finding something else different, like one of the man's arms being raised, or his head, or to find him standing up or gone, even. He forces himself, though, and breathes another relieved sigh when it turns out that he's just being paranoid, that there really is nothing to worry about this time.

There's still a cold chill tickling along his spine and all his limbs while he stares into those empty, silent, yet familiar eyes – his natural feeling of being watched, now more powerful than usual, has a reason behind it. He draws his fingers down over those eyes and closes them once more before leaving and locking the door tight behind him. He pulls his coat – previously having snagged it on his way out – tighter around him, shivering against both the rain and the still-present nervous fear in his heartbeats.

* * *

**Soo, there's the newest chapter! The next one is most likely going to be extremely long, unless I decide to be evil and place a cliffhanger in there somewhere. Like always, please review!**

**~Nara**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thanks to beelzezlover for your review!**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

He gets home late that night, after the storm has passed. He drops his coat on the floor after he closes the door, then heads straight into the bedroom – having forgotten what happened before he left, passing the body on the table – and shuts the door. Only after he is beneath the blankets of his bed does he realize that he didn't see what it was that changed about the man this time – though, really, does he even want to?

He tries to put it out of his mind, tries to think of other things in order to calm his fright – is it possible for him to feel such an emotion, given his profession? – and yet, in the midst of all his tossing, turning, and glancing over at the door, he comes to the slow realization that he'll never get to sleep unless he checks it out.

He stands up out of bed, the chill of the past-storm night air seeping into his skin through his shirt. Even with just a finger and his thumb on the knob, he can't seem to open it quietly enough. The room beyond looks darker than before, a hungry black maw gaping towards him, its thirst for blood left unfulfilled by the half-dry puddle of it in the middle of the floor. This is all irrational, he tells himself – everything 'strange' that's happened as of yet all have their reasons. Again, there is nothing to worry about – and, again, if he tells himself this enough times, he might actually come to believe it.

Nothing seems wrong, as far as he can tell; he waits for his eyes to adjust – which doesn't take too long – and looks at the body: nothing's different. Head is still tilted, eyes are still closed. He reaches out to touch the man, to be sure that this person is really dead on his table and is not just some figment of his deteriorating mind and sanity. Feeling the coldness of its skin, he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead and breathes out another sigh of relief. The beat of his heart slows back to normal, his fearful shivering stops. He turns back around to his bedroom –

-and then, he hears it.

He stops in his tracks, wondering if the rain started again: _Plip. Plip. Plip_. Perhaps it's just some excess rainwater, running off his roof or off the branches of a tree outside…no, no that can't be it. Rain doesn't fall in as steady a rhythm as this, with time between each seeming to be measured: _plip_, pause…_plip_, pause…_plip_. It seems so close, yet so distant; loud in the night's silence, quiet in truth. Everything about it is completely and totally unsettling – especially the fact that it's coming from behind him, near the man on the table – and it revives his nervous shiver and the scrambling beat of his heart. It's another thing that will keep him awake if he leaves it alone, another thing he absolutely does not want to inspect even though he knows he has to.

He turns back around slowly, ears instinctively straining to focus on its source – and, yes, it's coming from near the table…_plip_. He steps closer. _Plip_. He leans down, look at one leg of the table…then a second…but the third stands out to him. The trails of blood, black oil in the night, are dry on the other two; on this one, it's fresh, still wet when he puts his finger to it. _Plip_ – a drop lands on his nose, forcing him to tumble backward and suck in a sharp gasp out of surprise. He sits back against the wall breathing heavily, one hand clasped to his chest where he can feel his heart pounding, a string of curses pulling itself from between his lips. The blood isn't warm, but isn't cold either: the only way he can be certain of its presence is how it tickles at his sensitive nose when it rolls down the side.

Still bleeding. Still bleeding. Still _bleeding_. He doesn't attempt to coat the truth this time, doesn't try to make sense out of something that lacks it – no matter how he looks at it, what he tells himself or tries to convince himself of, no matter which way he views it, the man is still bleeding. Whether that means his heart never stopped, whether it means he's still alive – thriving off of blood drained from his body days ago, he doesn't know. The head tilting and opening of his eyes – were those both actions of a conscious, living being? Did he did his mouth in to and consume the flesh of someone who still lived?

He stands, skirts around the table – _plip, plip, plip_ – slams the bedroom door behind him and sits in the far corner of the room, knees held tightly to his chest. He keeps his eyes focused on the door and the wan moonlight shadows filtering beneath it and his ears straining, alert. He doesn't know what time it is, how many hours are left in the night, how long the man has been bleeding. He doesn't move from that corner while the moon reigns the sky and stays there well into the morning, the ceaseless dripping constantly wearing at his mind, as a pipe leak carves a hole in the stone below it. He doesn't sleep that night.


End file.
